Prose from a Machine: Call for Collaborators


I've become increasingly fascinated with what I can only call "machine prose"-methods, often Oulipian in nature, that impose a set of restraints on prose production toward all sorts of structural hootenannies. I don't call this specifically Oulipian (you know, those mainly French folks who write without the letter "e" or produce 1014 sonnets in flip-book form), because for me it also grows out of Surrealism, Dada, and the various methods of William S. Burroughs and Brion Gysin often listed under the inclusive rubric: "cut-ups."

These methods, taken together, certainly produce their share of garbage (although, sometimes, a culture's garbage says more than its Opera houses!), but just as often produces mediated work for a mediated culture-with the added bonus of offering interventionist critiques in a effective and often gut-busting form.

Over the last few years, I've been gathering methods and collaborators-picking up concepts as they arrive from my reading, my colleagues, and my accidents.

"See some methods here.

These are material processed that speak to the texture and substance of production rather than the content.

I'm producing different manifestations of these works (and others) with a series of collaborators over a period of years. Stay tuned for updates and announcements of available pieces. The first is the two-person instant novel Abecedarium, forthcoming from Chiasmus Press.

Stay tuned for updates as the project develops-and contact me with comments or possible collaborations.